


Not Taking it for Granted

by woodenwashbucket



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Temporary Character Death, Canonical Character Death, Depending on which version of canon, Gen, Playing fast and loose with timelines just go with it, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne are Siblings, Tim Drake has lost a lot of people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:09:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25111417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodenwashbucket/pseuds/woodenwashbucket
Summary: The worst days are the days Tim wakes up and the first thing he thinks of is a list of who’s dead. Those are the worst days. But there are other kinds of days – some bad, some good, and some that are more of a shock than anything else.Tim and Damian are brothers who lose each other and get each other back. Two mornings in the Wayne Manor kitchen.
Relationships: Tim Drake & Damian Wayne
Comments: 19
Kudos: 198





	Not Taking it for Granted

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly I don't know which deaths and fake-deaths and resurrections are canon in the current comics timeline, just ignore that part it's not what's important here.

The worst days are the days he wakes up and the first thing is remembering everyone who’s dead. Those are the worst days. Undeniable, without qualification, no matter how much he complains in hyperbole about any other kind of day, the worst days are when he wakes up and the first thing he thinks is a list of who’s dead. Those days are even bad enough that the number of names on the list doesn’t change very much about how bad they are.

Or maybe it’s just that when Kon and Bart and Bruce were on the list all at the same time, Tim was too depressed to actually register how bad it was. He can admit to himself, with the clarity of distance (and of fewer names on the list), that he should have probably been under observation for his own safety.

Of course, then no one would have found Bruce.

And he was under observation, though decidedly not for his own safety.

Oh well, he survived it, so whatever.

The second worst days are the days he wakes up and doesn’t remember at first that someone is dead. It varies who it is – his mom is most common, weirdly, and there was a particularly horrible second-worst kind of day once when it took all the way till afternoon to remember Kon was dead, and he had to go sit somewhere quiet for a while. There’s a day that wasn’t quite that bad for him but will haunt him forever, where he got almost all the way through asking Batman if Spoiler was patrolling with them that night before remembering. He managed to make it a different question. He’s still not sure if Bruce knew what he was going to ask.

Then there are days when he wakes up knowing who’s dead, and then remembers one or more of them _aren’t dead anymore_. Those are much better. The time he woke up and went through the litany of names and then realized that no, Steph _wasn’t_ dead, Steph had said she believed him (finally) that Bruce was out there somewhere, he could _go see Steph_ – that was one of the better days in that particular dark night of the soul. He woke up just the other morning with the familiar heavy feeling of loss, and between blink and blink remembered that Bart was back, that they could hang out and-

Those are much better days.

But there is another kind of day. Days that don’t really have a place on the scale of ‘how good or bad’ because they feel like shock more than anything else, because they feel like best and worst and also like losing his hold on reality so much more than any of the other kinds. Those days don’t happen so often, or at least not often without the mitigating circumstance of having been involuntarily drugged with hallucinogens, which Tim will admit is not the sort of thing that ought to count as a mitigating circumstance but really, really does. Those days haunt him worse than almost anything, and there’s a lot of competition.

It’s the days he wakes up knowing – _knowing –_ that a particular someone is dead, feeling the grief and the loss and the ache of the world being wrong in a way that can’t be fixed with any tool or skill Tim has at his disposal. Sometimes it’s right up front; sometimes it’s just part of the background. And then he sees whoever it is, just fine, going about a normal day, and the sudden re-assertion of reality feels like hitting cold water from too high up and also like the first breath after getting back to the surface.

“Drake?” Damian asks. He frowns with less of a scowl than usual. “Are you…injured?”

_Damian’s alive_ , Tim thinks. _We went and got him back. He’s alive and he’s a brat and he’s alive and he probably hid my cereal again and he’s alive. Damian’s alive._

“’M fine.”

Tim sits down in the nearest chair, because he feels light headed and his balance is off, and something has loosened up in his chest that he hadn’t noticed was tangled when he woke up.

“You look terrible,” Damian tells him, cuttingly. Less cuttingly than usual. Tim, were he thinking properly, would say something vaguely insulting in return, and they would eat breakfast in silence, pretending to ignore each other. Tim, however, is not thinking properly, because in addition to it being one of those days he is actually injured and hasn’t taken any painkillers yet since waking up, and forgot to eat after patrol last night and is so hungry it’s distracting.

So he says, in a voice that sounds like he’d just scaled a building, “I forgot you were alive again.”

Damian freezes, one hand reaching for a saucer and one just setting the sugar bowl down by the teapot. Tim apparently has no conscious control over his mouth this morning, so he keeps going.

“I woke up and I was in the wrong place in my head, I guess, and then here you are, and. Uh. It’s just a shock. To have my little brother back.”

As a rule, Tim is good at predicting people’s responses.

As a rule, Tim is dangerously good at predicting people’s responses.

He has no idea what Damian is going to do.

Damian is still facing away from him, but he places both hands on the edge of the counter slowly, and straightens up even more than he was before. There is silence in the kitchen, broken only by the soft breathing of a sleeping dog.

“A good shock, or a bad one?” Damian asks, in a voice that sounds his actual age in years for once. Tim startles.

“A good one, Damian, jeez. I-“ He stops, because really, logically, he’d have had every right to be glad when Damian was gone. For his own sake, at least. And it’s not like they’ve become best friends all of the sudden in the year or so since Damian came back. But his reply was immediate, automatic, and true, and it’s not because he was thinking of Bruce or Dick or Damian’s friends.

Not that what he thinks matters, because he apparently still doesn’t have any conscious control over his hecking mouth.

“I got someone I love back from the dead, Damian. That hasn’t happened often enough that I’m taking it for granted.”

They sit in silence for minutes, until Damian says “oh” and breaks the tension.

Tim has cereal for breakfast. Damian hid it behind the canning supplies, and it takes him seven and a half minutes to find it, and Damian smirks at him and Tim calls him a brat, and it’s not so bad of a day.

Three weeks later, Bruce starts systematically reviewing Manor surveillance, because Damian said something Bruce didn’t quite understand at Tim’s funeral and Bruce isn’t sleeping much anyway after burying another son, and finds the recording of that morning in the kitchen. Dick finds him a few hours later, still weeping.

Five months later, Tim stands in the Manor kitchen for the first time since coming back, feeling dizzy. The place is familiar and not. The space is too open and still too confining.

Damian walks into his peripheral vision, scowling worse than Tim has ever seen. He jumps. Damian pretends not to notice.

“Hi,” Tim says, belatedly. His heart rate is way too high, still. He blinks at the bowl of cereal Damian holds out. The cereal rattles when Damian shakes it impatiently. “Why?”

Damian scowls even harder.

“Eat your cereal, Drake.”

“Damian,” Tim says, bewildered and half-wary of this being another trick, that he’s going to turn around and find himself back in the cell again. The bowl thumps on the table, and hands push on his back until he drops into a seat. A spoon gets shoved into his hand. “Thank you?”

Damian pauses, at the counter fixing his tea, turned away, and the memory hits Tim so hard he nearly doubles over and gets cereal on his face, and he is undeniably, unshakably _here_.

“It hasn’t happened often enough,” Damian growls, “that I’m taking it for granted.”

It’s a new kind of day. It goes pretty darn high up on the scale.


End file.
